Senior Lecturer in French

Biography

Paul Rowe was born in Edinburgh in 1968. He was educated at Rydens Comprehensive School in Surrey, and then at the University of Birmingham, where he studied French and German. After two years as a lecteur d'anglais at the Université de Nancy II, he returned to Birmingham in 1993 to start his PhD. This he was awarded in 1998.

He was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of French Studies at the University of Birmingham from 1997 to 1999. He joined the French Department in Leeds in 1999 as a Lecturer, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2008.

Paul is one of the three Deputy Heads of the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies.

He teaches on a number of modules. At Level 1 he lectures on the French Revolution in Introduction to French Studies and on Benjamin Constant in Readings in Modern French Culture and Society. He also leads the cornerstone module on World Histories. At Level 2 he is co-leader, with Alison Fell, of Aspects of French History 1789-1914, and lectures on nineteenth-century thought in Foundations of Modern French Thought and on Balzac and Gauthier on the Short Form in French and Francophone Literature. At Level 3 he runs the module on the French Novel in the Nineteenth Century.

He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, serving as Treasurer from the foundation of the Society in 2001 until 2007.

Research

Paul Rowe's research on nineteenth-century culture focuses on Benjamin Constant, Franco-German cultural transfers, the press, and the Saint-Simonians.

He is a member of the international team preparing a critical edition of the uvres complètes de Benjamin Constant for De Gruyter. He serves as a member of the overall 'Comité Directeur' and is Vice-President of the 'Commission de la Correspondance' which oversees the publication of the Correspondance générale de Benjamin Constant within the overall framework of the uvres complètes. His main focus is editing the correspondence, but he has also contributed to the edition of the works in a variety of capacities.

His other research has all developed from the work on Franco-German cultural transfers that he did in his thesis. This led him to explore a variety of ways in which ideas were transmitted and received in the nineteenth century, between France and various cultures with which it came into contact, and by means including literary translation, encyclopaedia entries, newspaper articles, and the published and unpublished letters to newspapers.